Chapter Nine
Hellebore: A flowering plant in the buttercup family with downturned blossoms whose loamy, sour scent carries a message of loss
I’m on a ladder the next day, carefully untangling vines from the branches of one of the lemon trees, when I hear someone call my name. I lean back out of the tree canopy and catch sight of a man and a little girl walking toward me. The man, I notice, has a tool belt slung around his waist.
He raises his hand in the air. “Lucy?” he calls. “I’m Adam Lewis. I’m here to take a look at the garden gates.”
“I’ll be right there,” I call back.
I climb down the ladder and step over the boxwoods that I clipped into a neat row this morning. The air is still and soft and laced with the bright scent of the freshly cut hedge. Gully is at my side as I greet the newcomers.
I take off my glove to shake Adam’s hand.
Marjorie’s grandson is tall and broad-shouldered with a strong nose and a shaggy mess of dark hair curling around his ears.
His intelligent, somewhat sad eyes are a rich shade of brown.
And his scent? Sawdust and sunlight and dark chocolate…
and below all of that, the slightest trace of something else…
the lush, green smell of grass after spring rain.
He places his hand lightly on the shoulder of the girl beside him. “This is my daughter, Sophie.”
Sophie is maybe six or seven years old and very slight, with a heart-shaped face and tawny brown hair that curls like her father’s.
There is something troubled about her—her downcast eyes flit around nervously as she works the edges of her cardigan with her thin fingers.
She seems familiar to me, though I can’t imagine why.
I’m sure I’d remember if we had met before.
“Hi, Sophie,” I say. I nod toward Gully. “This is my dog, Gully. He’s very friendly.”
Gully looks at Adam and Sophie in his calm, expectant way, tail moving over the path behind him, and Adam immediately reaches out to scratch under his muzzle.
“Are you sure he’s not a horse?” he asks, head cocked.
I put my hand on my chin and pretend to study Gully. “He does love carrots.”
Sophie watches Gully intently but doesn’t venture from her father’s side.
Adam turns, taking in the garden. “This all looks great. Night and day compared to how it looked when I was here a couple of weeks ago.”
“There’s still a ways to go. I appreciate you coming out so quickly.”
He grins wryly. “Lucy, I’m as helpless as the next person when it comes to my grandmother’s powers of persuasion. She called me in a panic about some gate emergency, so here I am.”
“I appreciate her sense of urgency,” I tell him. “I have four weeks to get all of the gardens in shape, but when I tried to open one of the gates, it practically fell apart in my hand.”
He peers over to the nearest wall where one of the old, arched gates peeks out from within the ivy. “Let’s take a look.”
I nod and start to walk with him toward the wall, but stop when I notice that Sophie still has her gaze locked on Gully.
“He’s really very gentle,” I assure her. “Well, except his snoring, which nearly blew me out of bed last night. Did you know that dogs snore?”
Sophie flicks her hazel eyes up at me, a glimmer of interest in her serious expression, and then drops her chin again and gives a barely perceptible shake of her head.
“I didn’t know either before Gully came into my life,” I tell her. “But they do. Or at least this one does. He’s a pretty special guy.”
I watch as she reaches a tentative hand forward. Gully sniffs her fingers and then nudges her palm with his nose until she begins to pet him.
“Ah, he likes you. And he has excellent taste, so that tells me all I need to know about you, Sophie. If you’d like, you’re welcome to take him for a walk while your dad and I look at the gates.”
When Sophie glances at her father but still doesn’t say a word, I wonder if she is unable to speak or if she simply doesn’t want to.
“That’s a great idea,” Adam tells his daughter. As they look at each other, I sense that there is something complicated and pleading and sad between them. It’s as though each of them is asking a question the other can’t—or won’t—answer.
I take Gully’s leash from a pocket of my gardening belt, clip it onto his collar, and give the handle to Sophie. For a moment, the little girl doesn’t move. Then, with a last glance at her father, she turns and walks away, heading slowly down one of the paths with Gully at her side.
Adam watches her. “Thanks,” he says eventually, turning toward me. “That was nice of you.”
I shrug and smile. “It’s about time Gully got some exercise. He’s been napping out here all day.”
“Living the good life,” Adam says. “Who can blame him?”
We walk toward the wall, our boots crunching against the gravel path.
“I don’t think I’ve actually been able to see these walkways in years,” he tells me.
“I almost forgot they existed. This place has seemed pretty rough around the edges lately. It’s nice to see at least a piece of it starting to look like its old self again.
I can’t believe you’ve only been here a few days.
” He gives me that wry smile again. “But I guess I should have known. Marjorie told me that you’re the best.”
I laugh. “She told me that you’re a world-famous restoration carpenter.”
Adam slides his hand over his face, shaking his head, and I note the wedding ring on his finger.
“Please tell me she did not actually say that I’m world-famous,” he groans.
I press my lips together and don’t say a word.
He shakes his head again. “I assure you that I’m not. I run a local design-build firm with my brother. Rob’s the architect. I’m the contractor and carpenter. We specialize in restoring older homes to meet contemporary needs, marrying the old and the new.”
I hear the affection in his voice when he speaks about his brother, and it makes me feel a twinge of envy. It was always just the three of us—my mother, my father, and me. A small knot of family that has only grown smaller.
“You and your brother must get along well,” I say.
“Oh, we have our moments. But I think what makes our company work is that we approach our projects from different angles. Rob is usually pushing to modernize the design more than I’d like, and I’m always angling to restore what he affectionately calls ‘the moldy bits.’ ”
We’re in front of the wall now. I wave my hands toward the gate like I’m a game show host. “If you like moldy bits,” I say, “have I got a project for you.”
Adam’s amused, curious smile lingers on me for a beat before he turns his attention to the gate.
As he steps forward and places his palm against it, his expression grows thoughtful.
He moves his hand over the wood, then leans closer to the gate and peers at its hinges.
He holds the handle but doesn’t try to open it.
For a moment, he’s completely still, and I find myself wishing that I knew what he is thinking.
“It’s beautiful,” he says eventually. “And definitely original to the home.”
“Can you can repair it?”
“I think so. I’ll have to bring it up to my workshop in the city, though.
” He looks around, taking note of the three other gates visible along the walls.
“I should take them one at a time; I don’t want to stack them in my truck and risk damaging them more.
If you have a minute to give me a hand, we can lower this one off its hinges now. I’ll take it with me today.”
Adam has me brace the gate with my hands.
He pulls a hammer from the tool belt around his waist and begins to gently tap the pins out of the old hinges.
Standing beside him, I breathe in his layered scent.
Something in that barely-there trace of rain-soaked grass makes me forget myself for a moment…
I want to lean in closer, just to be sure it’s really there.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s lower it down.”
We slowly lower the gate onto the gravel path. As we do, the deep shadows beyond the wall reveal themselves inch by inch. By the time we set down the gate fully, I don’t have an ounce of patience left; I walk quickly around it and slip through the opening.
The walled garden is dark and lush and sheltered.
Ghostly white trunks of birch trees are tent poles holding up a low, shaggy canopy of leaves.
The air is soft and cool, scented with damp earth and green, growing things.
The landscape feels otherworldly, almost prehistoric.
I pick my way around waist-high ostrich ferns and hostas in every shade of green, feeling as though I’m wading into a silken pool, sinking deeper with every step.
There’s color here, too—flowers like jewels sewn onto green silk.
Rhododendron shrubs laden with magenta clusters of ruffled blossoms. Fronds of emerald ferns, luminous even in deep shadow.
Weeds, tangled and exuberant, are flourishing most of all, but among them I sense the vibrant blossoms of periwinkle, primroses, and lunaria, small buds of white anemone nodding atop tall, thin stems, speckled hellebores and toad lilies pressing toward the light.
And the viburnum! They’re thriving—ten feet tall and just as wide. Along the walls, and now and then along the edges of the path, their creamy-white, pink-tinged blossoms float atop dark green leaves, and their spicy vanilla fragrance threads through every shadow.
I duck below a low birch branch that hangs across the mossy, overgrown path. I’ll have my work cut out for me here. There’s a line between a curated woodland garden and woods, and years of neglect have pushed this place over it. I’ll have to thin some of the flowers, and divide the shrubs—
I startle at a sound behind me, and turn to see Adam ducking below the branch.
“I can’t believe how different it is,” he says, his voice full of awe.
“It’s a woodland garden,” I tell him, nodding. “It’s meant to feel much more natural than the formal one we were just in.”